Cidny Bullens
Cidny Bullens is not an uncommon name in the music business. She’s played with the likes of Elton John, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, and many others. She began her musical career in the early seventies. When she began a family she disappeared.
Now she is back with one of the most powerful albums about one of hardest experiences. The CD is called Between Heaven and Earth. It is a tribute, therapy, and a reason to move forward after Bullens lost her youngest child, Jessie, to cancer. The CD has guest appearances by Brian Adams, Bonnie Raitt, Beth Nielsen Chapman, and many others. For more information visit cindybullens.com
FEMMUSIC would like thank Ms. Bullens, and the staff of E-Town for making it possible to do this interview.
FEMMUSIC: What made you want to pursue music professionally?
CB: Well, I’m not sure I can really answer that. I just had that bug from the get-go, from the time I was very young. I think at about four years old listening to rock and roll on the radio. I had older siblings who were very much into what was popular at the time in the late 50’s & 60’s. I just loved it. I loved the backbeat. I loved the rhythm, the sounds, the soul that I heard. I always loved music. I knew from a very early age that I was going to pursue it.
FEMMUSIC: Who were your biggest influences?
CB: I think my biggest influences were The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to be perfectly honest with you. I have a lot of other influences like on one side Joni Mitchell, lyricly I think I loved her freedom of the lyric writing aspect, and on the other side the Blues, a lot of the old black blues artists like Emma Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and so on also listened to when I was very young. A lot of the R & B stuff because I loved the soulfulness of that music and the simplicity of it. But in terms of my own songwriting, and my own direction I think there’s a combination in what I do between The Beatles, I think melodically, and The Rolling Stones, rhythmically that I have in a lot of my stuff. So I would have to say The Beatles and The Rolling Stones with those other people.
FEMMUSIC: Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth is a starkly honest album. You could have kept these songs secret, or just done them at live shows. What made you decide to release them as a CD?
CB: The CD itself evolved. I actually started with the one song, which is the title track, “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth” which I wrote about three or four months after my daughter Jessie died. I had no intention of writing it. I just sat down one day with my guitar and it emerged. And so I decided from that point on that if I got inspired to do that I would do that but I wouldn’t try to do that. So over the next almost two years I wrote the ten songs. But in the midst of that two years I actually wrote the first three songs in the first year after Jessie’s death and then decided to record them just to give me something to do. I didn’t have an idea of a CD in my mind or anything. Just to kind of keep me busy, but it was all for me. It had nothing to do with anybody else hearing them. In fact I thought they were so honest and so personal that no one would want to hear them. So I did them for myself.
And then after I recorded the first three in March of ’97 I thought that was it for the writing and the whole thing about Jessie. Then a couple of months later I wrote “The Lights of Paris” after a trip to Paris, and I thought, “Oh gosh. Maybe I’m going to continue to write these personal, powerful songs and this experience.” It was then that I thought maybe if I continue to write then maybe I can get a whole CD out of it and again nothing about the public or anything. Just giving me something to do, and it evolved into making a CD after I wrote several more songs. Once it was done I can remember I mastered the ten songs on December 18th of 1998. I thought, and I had the disc in my hand of the mastered CD, and I thought, “Now what am I going to do with it?” Because I had it, and it was done, and it was certainly very good I thought. I wasn’t thinking in terms of commercial value but I knew that the songs were extremely powerful at least for me. And I’d heard along the way through musicians, and people who’d heard it. I didn’t play for a lot of people, but the people who were involved close to me, my friends and so on. It struck everybody pretty powerfully. So I thought well, I will put out a thousand copies, a limited edition. I’ll press them up myself. I’ll put up a special packaging because I designed the artwork and all that stuff with some help. I put together exactly the package that I wanted to. The package that you see today is the package that I put together with no record company involvement or anything. Except on the limited edition, which I pressed up a thousand, I had a cover for that. The CD went inside of a package. Anyway I sold those for $25 a piece through word of mouth and friends, and I put a website together and stuff and donated 100% to my daughter’s foundation, The Jessie Bullens-Crewe Foundation to benefit the State of Maine children’s cancer program where Jessie was treated. But even in January when I knew that was what I was going to do it was difficult for me to make the decision to have these songs become public because they were so personal to me. I had time emotionally, just doing the kind of switch over from personal inside to knowing it was going to heard by other people, and judged by other people. But the responses that I got, the initial responses that I got from the limited edition from the people who had gone through the death of a child, or people who just thought it was an inspiring piece of work very quickly let me know that I had done the right thing. That was in January, actually in March by the time I had it pressed up and everything. In March was when I released the limited edition, and then in May I got a call from Danny Goldberg at Artemis, who had just started his own record company, Artemis Records, saying that he had the heard the CD and he wanted to talk to me about it. So I went in. It’s been an interesting transition. It’s been an interesting process, but I do feel the CD, the music I should say has a life of it’s own and I’m just kind of following it along. So it feels good to me now. It feels like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing with this music. Even though I wrote it for myself, so many people have responded to it so deeply that I’ve done something good.
FEMMUSIC: What would be your goal with the CD?
CB: I have a very simple goal for the CD, and I’ve had before anyone else ever heard it, and that is, “Whoever needs to hear it should hear it.”
It’s very simple. I never thought I would have a national record deal, commercial record deal. I didn’t have a clue that I’d be doing E-Town and Mountain Stage, and doing national tours, and being on CBS This Morning, and The Today Show and Conan O’Brien, and being played on the radio all over the country. I had no idea that would ever happen. So that is all part of this gift. I’m glad it’s happening because the more people…I’ve had hundreds of responses, both e-mail and snail mail, personally when I do a concert. I talk to a lot of people after I do a concert. They want to talk to me. So I just have a very simple goal for it. If someone needs to hear it, they should hear it. I have no idea what’s to come with the music. I mean with this particular CD. I think it’ll keep going this year. I think that more people will hear it. It really has nothing to do with the music business. I’m being helped by Danny Goldberg and Artemis Records right now, and they know and I know it. They have a bottom line but for me it’s not about what happens to it commercially in terms of how “successful” it is. I don’t really care. I think it’s great that it’s being heard by more and more people because of the positive responses I get. That’s it really. For it to go on if it needs to go on. I think it will.
FEMMUSIC: In the song “Boxing with God” you actually mention Jessie’s death in a verse. What can you tell me about that song?
CB: You know it’s interesting with that song. The title, the phrase “Boxing with God” came to me very quickly after Jessie’s death and I wrote it down. I wasn’t writing at that time, or anything. I couldn’t think let alone write a song in the first few months after Jessie’s death until “Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth” came to me. I felt like I was literally boxing with God at that point. I would really like to leave it open to interpretation because we all have our own idea, concept of God or not. To me it’s, even though I have my own spiritual beliefs, it’s more of a metaphor for the struggle in life and what life brings, and what life takes.
But my father is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and at that point when I wrote the song he had just been diagnosed. We knew before his diagnosis. They live in South Carolina. I mean every word of this is true. There’s nothing made up in the CD. In fact there’s very few metaphors in it at all. I think only song that has a metaphor is the second verse “In Better Hands” when I talk about the fire which is really Jessie’s cancer. Otherwise even the red bird in “The End of Wishful Thinking” happened. So I was just thinking about my dad and his struggle and the fact that he was this war hero, athlete, and stuff, and now he was just sitting in a chair in South Carolina. So I was thinking about my dad, and then obviously Jessie, and of course about my own struggle. It seemed…I can’t analyze the songs too much. You have to understand that these songs were not really thought about before they were written. The thing I did with “Boxing with God” is I remembered that phrase, “Boxing with God”, when I was sitting down thinking about my dad. So the two kind of caught, and so I wrote that verse about my dad, and then I thought, “Oh!”, and so it became a generational thing. But I don’t analyze the songs. How they came to me? What I was thinking about other than the obvious stuff ’cause that’s not how they came. I prefer to not to analyze them. They just came that way.
That song has provoked a lot of response from people. A LOT of response from people. And you would think that with the direct reference to Jessie’s death in there that they would shy away from it, but quite the contrary has happened with that song. I think people identify with the struggle, and understand that everyone goes through loss. Whether it’s the loss of a parent, a child, or a spouse or a divorce, or a job, but we all “Box with God” in our own way. It turned out to be a very, very powerful song.
FEMMUSIC: Another powerful song is “Scarlet Wings” that has the chorus which is a duet between you and Jessie. Can you tell me why you decided to go with that chorus?
CB: You mean with my daughter singing it, Reid? That happened…I told you this album has a life of it’s own. I really truly believe, the further I get away from it, that Jessie dictated everything that was supposed to happen with it because there are too many stories to relate on how things came to be. How I wrote something, or how a musician happened to play on it or something, or how this guest artist happened to sing on it, or even how Reid happened to sing on it.
I wrote that song…that was the hardest song that I wrote. That was the only song that took me more than one sitting to write because the others were kind of, more inspired at the moment. That one took me a long…that one took me about a month or so to write. I don’t even remember because I couldn’t. I kept asking myself why the heck I was writing this song because it was just so painful to me. Every time I’d sing “As long as you love/You will see me in the stars/As you look up in the stars/I will be there” and then “As long as you love/I will whisper in your ear/Little whispers you will hear…” .
“Forget it!” I was just sobbing. So in any case I did finish writing the song. Tony Berg who’s the co-producer on that track, I did those songs out in California piecemeal like. Once every three months I go out and do another instrument which is much different from how the other songs were done. When it came to do the vocal, which I actually did before any of the other instruments were on except for guitar (not guitar, that was “Boxing with God” ), except for a synthesizer and a drum loop; I couldn’t do the vocal. I could sing the verses and every time I got to the chorus I would either have to block myself out so much that I was being too distant, or going the other way, if I started singing honestly and truthfully, I’d start sobbing. I couldn’t find the balance between vocal quality and emotional honesty in this song. I can’t sing these songs and be detached from them even live, it just doesn’t work. Of course now I’ve learned, I’ve found a space that I struggle with, but nobody sees that struggle, I hope. I find it, but in the first times of singing them it was difficult. So I did, over a period of months, several months, I did like fourteen lead vocals on that song and I couldn’t get it. So I was back at home, in Maine, listening to this kind of latest attempt, and I was trying to think of something we (Reid and I) could do because I wanted her to be involved in the record anyway. She’s the surviving daughter. I didn’t want her to feel alienated by, “Oh yeah. My mom’s doing a record about my dead sister.”
She was only a teenager. It was so complex all this stuff. So I wanted her to be on this record. So I’m driving along listening to this latest attempt, and then I said, “What am I stupid? Reid should be singing this. Reid should be singing the chorus of this. I mean it’s Jessie anyway. It’s my child’s voice that I’m trying to sing.” So I called Tony in California and I said, “I’m going to have Reid singing on it.” Well, he asked, “Can she sing?” I mean he knew her but he never knew she singed. And I said, “She can sing.” She could sing. I knew it was more than me being sentimental or wanting to try and force something. So I asked her, and she said, “Yeah. I’ll do it.” In that typical teenage fashion.
So we went into Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, Maine which my husband helped found with Bob Ludwig. So I asked, “Bob, do you have any vocal mics? Can we do a vocal?” He said, “Sure. We’ll do it digitally. ” This album was done in every possible format you can imagine: 24 track analog, to ADATS, to D88’s, to digital, to spit and polish. I mean everything. So I got a D88 of the track, so digitized it, and put it in Protools, and Raid, and he put up a mic, and Reid sang the vocal. It didn’t take all that long. She took direction from me very well. She doesn’t like to sing soft. She likes to belt it out, but she did it, and it was stunning. I mean when I first listened to it…I mean I was producing it so I wanted to make sure everything was right, and handle quality as well, but when I put it all together, and put it in my car, and flew out to California within a couple of days to put it back on the master and hopefully get Tony’ approval on it. I put in the tape, and I started to sob. It was so powerful and it was absolutely the right thing.
So Tony has this little studio in the back of his house, and so I was out in this yard kind of just sitting there while they were transferring the vocal, and he was in there when all of the sudden I hear this, “Oh My God!! Shit’s beautiful.” I mean he fell over. It’s almost too much I’m sure for people to hear, but it’s the right thing. So that’s how that happened. It wasn’t planned to happen, but that’s how it happened. That’s the way things have gone with this whole thing has gone. And now she (Reid) does that with me live whenever she can. Not that often. It’s just amazing. It’s an amazing thing. It’s good for her too. It became a family affair. That song is a very powerful song.
FEMMUSIC: The CD ends with “Better Than I’ve Ever Been” which is almost a renewal song. How are you doing now, and what are your plans for the future?
CB: “Better Than I’ve Ever Been” was the ninth song written on the ten. The last three songs were “Water on the Moon” , “Better Than I’ve Ever Been”, and the last song was “The End of Wishful Thinking.” They were all written in one week which was another story of Jessie’s intervention.
“Better Than I’ve Ever Been”, I’ll just talk a tiny bit about the song. Was my hope for myself at the time that I wrote it. It was almost two years to Jessie’s death when I wrote it. I knew that I was going to live. I knew that I was going to be a productive person in my life. I wrote that song as my own pep talk really. My own reminder that what was important for me now was to try to be the best person that I could be. That’s as simple as that is. It’s not about being happier because that word is kind of out of my vocabulary. It’s about being the best person that I can be. Reminding myself that’s what I now want to strive for.
I don’t think too much about my future. The future is a difficult subject for me because what it means STILL to me is that Jessie’s not there physically. She’s obviously there spiritually and emotionally. In a non-physical sense, and she will always be. I have a different sense of time, and I have a different sense of future than I’ve ever had before. I think I live more in the “now” more than ever. That doesn’t mean I don’t fret or worry or have concern about people and situations in my life.
I don’t want to get caught up in what I’m going to be doing. I’m hoping see through the very, very end, if there is an end, which there will never be a true end. I would like to follow through the arc of this project.
People have started to ask me, “Are you making another record? Are you writing?…” The answer is “No. I’m not at the moment.” I’m not writing songs at the moment although I’ve got a little stirring of things, and I will probably write some songs this year. There is an energy that goes into this particular project that apparently needs all of my attention. So I plan on giving this all of my attention. When I say this project, there may be outside projects that may be tentacles of this like The Jessie Bullens-Crewe Foundation, I may write a book about this process. I’ve already written a children’s book that’s being illustrated that will probably come out which is all about Jessie based on a true scenario. Stuff like that. It all has to do with the same focus. The same emotion.
So I’m taking it one day at a time. I hope, I’d really like to keep performing this music. I hope that continues this year. I’d like to continue being out there with this music is what I’d really like to have happen for a while longer. Eventually I’ll probably make another record. It won’t be this one. It won’t be close to this one. It’ll be something completely different, probably. I could never try to duplicate this. I can’t try which is why I have to kind of wait to see what’s going to emerge. I hope Artemis Records and the public allow me to do this record for a while longer.
I am doing some things like performing and speaking at various conferences in the United States. Medical conferences, hospice conferences, different groups that are involved with diseases and pediatrics and hospices. I’ve done quite a few of those in ’99. That will continue in 2000. Also a lot of benefits for children’s cancer concerns, and other concerns, so that will continue. And that’s a goal of mine to continue to do that. I’ve put a lot of energy into that. I really don’t have any commercial goals.
FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you ever been discriminated against?
CB: Well that’s a question that I suppose has to be answered by my own perspective because I can’t prove anything. First of all, I’ve been in the music business for twenty-five years, twenty-six years now.
My first encounters in the business were singing background with Elton John in ’75, and doing other background vocals on other CDs like Rod Stewart albums, we didn’t have CDs back then. Working with people like Rod Stewart and producer-singer-songwriter Bob Crewe a lot of people.
But when I started going on my own in ’78, I was very close to having several record deals but because I was a “girl” with an electric guitar; I was one of the first, in fact I was the first, other than Suzy Quatro, female, solo female playing an electric guitar. I was called the female Mick Jagger. I was writing my own songs, but playing electric guitar, and jumping up on stage. People didn’t know what to do with me. I was the new on style. I wasn’t Joni Mitchell. I wasn’t Suzy Quatro. I was like Bruce Springstein, but I was a girl. In that sense I probably was discriminated against because I got of lot “Oh gee well. You’re a girl. What are you doing that for? What are you playing electric guitar for. Why don’t you do this? You don’t sound like so-and-so.” Later on it was, “Well we already have a woman on our record label so we don’t want to have two women on our label.”
I remember doing a demo in 1975 of my own stuff in a studio in Los Angeles, and a very famous producer came in, and he listened to this once, and said “You know you’re really great but you’re going to have twice as hard a time as anybody else.” I said, “Why?” , and he said “Because you’re a woman.” It had never occurred to me in my life. EVER crossed my mind because I didn’t grow up with that “I’m a girl so I’m going to make it.” I just grew up the way I grew up, and I was a tomboy, and played out in the little league. They didn’t let me doing something, I did it anyway. I never considered that because I was a girl or a woman that I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted to do. I had a very difficult time convincing people because I was different. I’ve always been different. I’m still different even though there are so many more females now in which I’m grateful for. You know I was before Pat Benetar, and Melissa Etheridge and a lot of people. People have told me, a little bit before my time. It wasn’t acceptable to be as powerful as I was back then in terms of my presence in rock and roll.
In that sense, that’s just my experience, and then of course I bowed out for a while because I got married and had kids and then came back. You know, stories like even in 1989 when I had a record deal with MCA when I got a second chance, a third chance really. I thought, “Ow. This is going to be good.” When I did my video they didn’t want me to wear T-shirts and jeans, they wanted me to wear a tube top and earrings and I said, “Fuck you!” That’s not who I am, and I’ll never do that.
So I never bended, and I probably didn’t get as far as I could have gone if I had bended, and compromised. I wouldn’t compromise my music. I’ve had one record company tell me, “We don’t want you to write and produce your own stuff. We want you to sing somebody else’s songs.” And I said, “You want somebody else. You go get somebody else if this is what you want me do to.” They never would have said that to Bruce Springstein, or Paul Simon, “We don’t want you to write your own songs.” There was nothing wrong with my songs.
I guess in that sense I have been. I don’t go out and say , “Oh! I was discriminated against by the music business.” You know life is life so you do what you do. Here I am. I’m just going to do whatever I can do now. Didn’t happen before, whatever it is I wanted back then. I have different things now so I don’t care what the music business thinks of me. I really don’t. I care that Danny Goldberg, and Artemis Records believes in this record and they cared enough to have me be their first signing, and they believe enough in the music, understanding what it was about, to put it out with a woman who’s over forty, hasn’t made a record for ten years, and now made a record about the death of her child. Pretty brave. So they did that, and I’m very grateful for that, and as far as it takes me, I will go. I will blame no one for what doesn’t happen because I don’t care. I really don’t about what anybody thinks. Other than somebody coming to me saying that their grateful I made the record. I care about that. But I don’t care about the negativity. You can’t.